She gets out of her car.
It’s an older car, but in fantastic condition, although it could use a
good tune up and a bath, and the brakes squeak something fierce. She reaches into her bag, switches out her
home & car keys for her work keys.
This is much how she looks at her life.
Two very separate things. Work
and Home. Funny enough, she has one
personal key on her work keyring, and one office key on her home set. She never thought about the poignancy of that
much – but realizes that pretty much encapsulates her life. Sometimes the two slip into eachother, and
that is more than ok. She loves her
job. It is a job. It is not necessarily a career, they type
that you go to school or train for for years, and it is your goal, your end
game. But she has made it her career and
that is alright too. She makes casual
conversation with a coworker as she walks in, changing her usual route to be
polite and finish the conversation. She
enters her office. Her own office, all
to herself. Comes with being the
manager. The office manager. It smells faintly floral, girly. The scent welcomes her almost as if welcoming
her home. She turns on the lights,
brings her garbage pail in from the hallway.
She changes her flip flops for snazzy dress sandals that will compliment
her outfit, quite literally throws her bag and purse into the closet. She has one of those “page-a-day” calendars
on her desk, and she pulls off yesterday’s sheet, sometimes without looking at
the new Word of the Day, sometimes reading it closely if it catches her
attention. She marks of yesterday on a
bigger calendar behind her, as if she is counting down to something. She is not.
It mostly reminds her of what day it is.
What day she is currently living.
To live in THAT day.
She pulls herself up to her desk, rolling the chair on the
protected carpet, keys in her password.
She pretty much starts her day just this way, everyday. Some days she doesn’t have morning chit chat
with a coworker, or she doesn’t have to change her shoes. But other than that
it pretty much is the same.
She has a binder that she shoves under her desk that she
carries to and from work everyday. It is
a novel that she is working on. She
writes. She is a writer. It took a long
time for her to allow herself to call herself that. A writer.
Maybe she will take a lunch break today, and work on her novel. She thinks this everyday. Some days, she does. Most days, she does not.
She loves her job.
She worked hard to get where she is – although to some it may not seem
like much. She is the Office
Manager. Or as her daughter says “a
fancy secretary.” Which is kind of
true. She is a fancy secretary. She has been an office worker for going on 21
years now. She started working in a
factory, and CEO of the company decided she was too bright to be kept
squirreled away in that dark damp dirty warehouse, and gave her an entry
position in the office. She worked her
way up throughout that office, learning all the office skills necessary, and by
the time that business closed, she was the Executive Assistant to the President
and Vice President. This was no small
feat for her. Everyone in her family,
including her extended family was “blue collar” – working factory, warehouse, restaurant
or manual labor jobs. She became one of
the first ones who had to “dress up” for work, ever. She wasn’t a Professional, but she was the
Professionals’ assistant, and that meant something!
Now she is also a boss to 3 other secretaries, and that is
the hardest part of her job. So she
feels she has earned the right to the title Manager. So she corrects her daughter when she calls
her a “secretary”. She has earned her
stripes, she has earned her title.
She checks her email; there will be at least 10 new messages
from overnight. She checks her calendar,
and her task list, reminding her of what she has to look forward to throughout
the day. She sends a good morning email
to her best friend at the office. They
will email throughout the day, it is a nice friendly exchange that will help
both of them get through the monotony or stress of the day ahead.
And so, it begins.
And ends at exactly 5 o’clock.
When she will pack up her bag, put back on her flip flops, put the
garbage pail in the hallway, turn off the lights. She will take out her car keys, and store her
office keys. She will slip out the fire
escape door that no one is supposed to use unless it is an emergency. She will get in her old dirty car, pull out
of the parking space, her brakes squeaking the entire way (“You should have
that looked at” people have said; she agrees).
She drives home. She listens to
an audio book on the way, or maybe a podcast.
She pulls into her driveway, and smiles.
Home. She will see her husband
and her daughter. Her dog and her
cat. She will hug them all , in the way
that they allow her too – each different degrees of intimacy and affection.
She washes dishes, and laundry. She prepares a meal, feeds the animals. She picks up items that have been left
wherever they have been dropped throughout the house. Her husband, daughter and she take the dog
out, over and over again. She irons her
clothes and her daughter’s clothes for the next day. She curls up next to her husband, preparing
for sleep. She has developed the habit
that she must touch him. Some part of
her body, her bare skin, HAS to be touching his bare skin. She wonders about this habit every night
before she goes to sleep. Every
night. How did this become a habit? and
what would she ever do if he was not there?
She drifts off to sleep to the sounds of a music channel on the TV. She has set the timer, it will shut off while
she is already in dreamland.
She will wake up to the sound of the dog whining to go out,
she will pull on a pair of sweat pants and flip flops, and take the dog out to
pee on the front lawn. The air will be
dewy and cool, and silent. Even the
birds will still be sleeping. She will
maybe go back to sleep for an hour, maybe not.
And she will, begin her day again.
